Isothermal hydrodynamic pressure and load carrying capacity of parallel rough surfaces based on FFT techniques
In lubricated contacts, the component macrogeometry (radius of curvature) determines the pressure generation, and the surface microgeometry (i.e., roughness) alters it somewhat. However, for parallel surfaces, the microgeometry completely determines the hydrodynamic lubrication. This paper extends earlier work to numerically solve the isothermal hydrodynamic pressure generation and load carrying capacity (LCC) of surfaces with more complicated roughness features. A fast Fourier transform (FFT)-based method is described to quickly obtain the pressure distribution. The method is applicable to both real surface topographies and artificially generated rough surfaces. Results show that it enables one to predict the hydrodynamic pressure, when cavitation is negligible. The relative error of the LCC over the central domain is smaller than 8% and a 500× time saving, compared with the numerical method, is obtained.